CoooolTV (lost Japanese TV stop-motion miniseries; 2003)

The franchise's logo.

Status: Lost

CoooolTV was a stop-motion miniseries that aired on Nippon TV (also known as NTV) in Japan based on the Bratz franchise by MGA Entertainment. It aired back in 2003 for only a few months from August to late September, consisting of around 6 minutes each.

Background

Back in 2003, toy company MGA Entertainment saw massive success in their aforementioned doll line with 125 million products being sold worldwide by Christmas of that year and saw an opportunity to market them outside of America with one of their most popular brands in their sleeve. MGA partnered with Japanese toy company TOMY to redistribute them as a cheaper and less detailed version of the "Cool Bratz" line in Japan but did not receive the same success as their US counterparts. They knew that "Cool Bratz" did fail, but that didn't stop MGA from relaunching their release in Japan as a new marketing campaign started on January 2003 where they would partner with toy company Takara and music conglomerate Avex Inc. to promote the dolls as "digital idols" more than simply characters to line up with current culture in Japan at the time.

The 1st single debut was released in August 27, 2003 under Avex Inc. was called Show Me What You Got that was sung by South-Korean singer and songwriter Kwon Bo-ah (more commonly known as BoA) and Howie D. from the Backstreet Boys. The single was popular enough to be on the Oricon Singles chart at #34 and sold around 11,000 copies. There are also two B-side songs along with Show Me What You Got called Distance and Can U Feel The Beat that were also made by BoA and followed with Look Around in November 27, 2003 by Christina Milian and Verbal only in Japan. Look Around was also a tie-in song as MGA partnered with pastry and sweets company Morinaga using the dolls they had in their BAKE Chocolate commercials, tying in with the first ever TV series in the doll franchise's history.

Premise

This miniseries follows the main Bratz girls, Cloe (Rumi Sabnani), Jade (Asami Yoshida), Yasmin (Chiaki Kawamoto), Sasha (unknown voice), and another addition to the cast named Dana (Hana "Erika" Collar) as American tourists on their adventures in Japan. The series was produced by MGA Entertainment and Avex Media with Show Me What You Got reported as the series' theme song but was short-lived and only gone through a few episodes.

Controversy

The series was unfortunately dead on day one as it aired on dead timeslots on Thursday nights from 9:54 PM to 10:00 PM and reruns on Fridays from 2:03 AM to 2:09 PM. That was because of Japanese trad-moms and parent groups fully hating on the "foreigner" dolls that were "mocking" Japanese cultures on TV, hence why and how the series was cancelled.

Availability

Possibly due to how obscure and unpopular the series had, it never got any DVDs despite many fans on forum sites back then demanding a DVD release or an official upload from the Japan Bratz website. However, both of these never happened. There were also links that once led to the episodes but all of them were struck with copyright infringement.

Gallery

A stop-motion video that was uploaded on a fansite called BratzMania.com

Ray Mona's video on the subject.

The Look Around album and song.

The Show Me What You Got music video.

Can U Feel The Beat.

Distance.

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  One of the wallpapers on the Japanese Bratz website featuring the main cast.

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  A Dana wallpaper.

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  A Jade wallpaper.

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  A Sasha wallpaper.

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  A Yasmin wallpaper.

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  A wallpaper of the Bratz crew facing forward.

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  The Look Around album.

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  The Show Me What You Got album cover.

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  A BAKE advertisement featuring the Bratz crew.

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  A profile sheet of the main cast that was delivered along with prizes.

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  One of the prizes of the BAKE contest with a Funk 'n' Glow 2nd edition Yasmin doll.

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  A shooting of what possibly seems to be a CoooolTV episode in production at the Jidaiya.

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  An information card of CoooolTV.